Tennessee Williams Explored

Why Tennessee Williams? In the years since his first play premiered, Williams' characters have become fixtures in the American consciousness. Indeed few playwrights have created so many seminal characters. To explore the work of Tennessee Williams is to explore stories that are uniquely American, essentially human, and thus capable of touching and teaching us a great deal about ourselves. Understanding Williams' work, the playwright himself, and seeing both within the context of American theater and the work of other great playwrights, open up a world full of poetry and meaning for your students, and deepen their understanding of how literature reflects every day life. The featured lessons explore works that deal with the psychological climate of the post-Civil War South, dramatize the tensions and tragedies of American families, and define important themes and concepts in modern American theater.

Lessons:

Students will explore Tennessee Williams' classic,The Glass Menagerie, to study the concept of memory from a personal perspective, and then as an element of modern American drama.

This lesson explores the function of memory as a dramatic and structural device in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, and compares it to Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie.

This lesson is an exploration of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, with emphasis on Williams' use of characteraization and dramatic structure, and his techniques for engaging the audience.

Using comparative analysis techniques, students explore A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams and Long Days Journey into Night by Eugene O'Neill, centered on tensions and tragedies in two American families.

Students study setting, plot, character development in Tennessee Williams' play, A Streetcar Named Desire and discuss its impact on American theatre, then participate in group reading and analysis of the play.

This lesson focuses on various ways the content of selections of William Faulkner’s prose and Tennessee Williams’ one-act plays illuminate aspects of the psychological climate of the South following the Civil War.

Students engage in a series of activities comparing Eugene O'Neill's The Hairy Ape and Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, and conduct a comparative analysis of the two plays.